In a network environment with shared access, such as the outroute of a DVB-S2 based satellite network, and fluctuating bandwidth availability due to, for example, physical layer characteristics, traffic may be admitted, shaped, or shed, and backpressure may be provided to ingress traffic as a function of either a static estimate of the available bandwidth based on the mean and standard deviation of typical conditions, a semi-static estimate of the available bandwidth based on historical analysis of the conditions, or a slow moving tracking of the long term changes of the conditions. These methods of managing traffic may not optimize the usage of the shared access and, thus, may not correctly schedule traffic in a manner that honors quality of service (QoS) requirements.
On a shared access network where the available bandwidth can fluctuate, the traffic from numerous sources may be multiplexed into a data stream that may be transmitted over an air interface. Due to various QoS requirements and customer classification criteria, the incoming traffic data may first be grouped into multiple IP layer and acceleration gateways before multiplexing into a link layer gateway, where the data stream to be sent over the air interface is formed. In a DVB-S2 system, the IP layer and link gateway may be referred to as the IP gateway (IPGW) and the satellite gateway (SGW), or gateway, respectively. The data stream may be broadcast to remote network nodes, such as Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs).
Network resource management and traffic flow control may be used to efficiently utilize the available bandwidth and at the same time provide satisfactory QoS to different traffic classes.